own labour and responsibility. Obviously the wages of the knitter were less when employed by a bagman than when employed directly by the hosier.[1] It was upon the bagman system that attention was concentrated in the inquiry of 1844–45.
The bagman was, as a rule, a man of small capital who had induced hosiers to entrust their yarn to his keeping. He was the sole intermediary between the hosier and many scattered knitters. He alone knew the price of goods and the margin between prices and wages. He could not make profit on raw material, nor increase the margin by extending his sphere of operations as a large capitalist employer might. He depended entirely upon his deductions from wages and upon the rent he obtained from frames. The Report of 1845 is a chorus of denunciation of his doings in these two respects.
The rent of frames was a fixed one and bore no relation to the amount or value of work done, nor to the capital value of the frame itself. It was an old customary payment sanctioned by a century of usage. It was open to any one to make frames and hire them to the various workers in the industry.[2] A class of people was thus called into existence whose sole connection with the industry was the income from rents,[3] which were paid week by week without abatement for slack time, so that the rent became a first charge upon the produce of the industry. Frames could be hired to hosiers, bagmen, or knitters themselves. In practice the last never happened, because the knitters were too poor to guarantee the rent. The bagmen paid higher rents than the hosiers, as there too there was an element of risk. Consequently the bagman had to recoup himself from the wages of the knitters, as he had no margin for economies on the side of the hosier.
Thus force of circumstances drove the bagman to exploit the knitters. Framework-knitting had largely ceased to be a skilled trade since the introduction of an inferior make of stockings about 1819.[4] Access to the trade was therefore easy, apprenticeship being a thing of naught. Trade was always fluctuating owing to the changes of fashion. New goods were continually being introduced. Thereupon a new influx of hands, attracted by the good pay in the special branch, took place. Very soon the fashion changed, and the new hands
